Girding One's Loins
Girding One’s Loins
I love that phrase……it is meaningful and sounds a bit naughty at the same time. Whether you are preparing yourself for weight loss or plastic surgery, are feeling a bit shaky as you consider the emotional growth you need to experience to be healthy as a thinner person or are contemplating other substantive changes in your life, there is a period before you take action that is like no other. I looked up “girding loins" on the internet and found a wide array of definitions and descriptions, from its biblical origins, to a physical act of protecting one’s nether regions with clothing, to an emotional preparation process. The definition that I found most relevant to my current state of mind is: “to summon up one’s inner resources for action". Actions have consequences, both for yourself and for the other people in your life. Inaction does, too, but those consequences fall mostly on you.
Therein lies the dilemma. Do you risk change and the resulting conflicts with the people in your life in the hope of becoming healthier and/or happier or do you continue with life as it has been so as to avoid altogether the possibility of failure or conflict with those people? As difficult as my own decision was to have weight loss surgery in order to improve my physical health, that decision seems to have been much easier than making any significant decisions related to potentially improving my emotional health and happiness. I suppose improvements in that regard will be mostly for my benefit and any negative consequences would fall largely on others. I worry about becoming selfish in my search for a sense of self.
I despise conflict with the people I care about, but I also recognize that certain areas of my life need to change in order to minimize the likelihood that I will once again eat for comfort, or worse, turn to some other transfer addiction to numb myself in the face of my own inaction and unhappiness. Thus I find myself girding my loins so I can take on those challenges and conflicts with a clear mind and an open heart. There is both fear and excitement in the tumult of my mind. My recent exercise and meditation endeavors have given me a small measure of inner peace and determination, but also, oddly enough, a sense of urgency, an inner drive to take action sooner rather than later. To me that means a timetable of weeks or months rather than one of hours or days, yet I can feel it coming, an unseen but looming presence that haunts my thoughts.
RP
